While Obama Is Golfing, Mexico Is Shaking Itself To Pieces

Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress have refused to finish building the fence that was approved during the Bush years, they’ve refused to secure the border, and they’ve actually sued Arizona for trying to enforce the immigration laws that the federal government refuses to enforce. However, this is turning into an increasingly dangerous situation that has the potential to become extremely dangerous for Americans in border states.

In John Bolton’s column in the New York Post today, he details the frightening level of drug violence that’s now occurring south of the border:

Mexico today increasingly resembles Colombia 25 years ago. Drug cartels are strengthening rapidly, Mexico’s governmental authority and legitimacy are weakening and the people are deeply divided over how to respond to the cartels’ challenge to Mexico’s civil society.

The stakes for the United States were high in Colombia back then, but they are even higher now in Mexico.

The drug cartel threat has already rendered broad areas on our side of the border unsafe. The State Department has ordered dependents in some consular posts to leave Mexico and warned against cross-border travel by land, even in daylight. Central American diplomats have been held hostage. Travel advisories for tourists warn of the growing danger, exemplified by recent tourist kidnappings in Acapulco. Moreover, since criminal gangs are the main distributors of illegal drugs in the United States, there is every reason to fear the violence could infect us in short order.

The statistics alone are frightening: Reliable estimates put the number killed by drug-related violence in the past four years at 28,000. Fully 30 journalists and 11 mayors have been assassinated so far in 2010. Corruption in Mexico’s police and judiciary, long a serious and insidious problem, is worsening. The cartels engage in open gun battles with the police and, among themselves, compete for territory and markets. In Ciudad Juarez, right on the border with El Paso, 102 police have died this year alone in drug-related violence.

…As for weapons, Mexican complaints are badly misplaced. The United States has effective export controls in place, and in any event, the drug cartels have multiple sources globally for the weapons they seek.

…We have tried to aid both Mexico’s police and its military, most visibly through the 2007 Merida Initiative. Unfortunately, our efforts are nowhere near “Plan Colombia’s” ultimately successful levels, much of the potential assistance has been tied up bureaucratically in Washington, and there are valid concerns about the efficacy of the resources once in Mexican hands.

Moreover, President Obama has demonstrated insufficient leadership against illegal drugs and their corrosive effect on American society.

Nor has his administration demonstrated sufficient concern for U.S. residents in the border areas, where vulnerability to drug-related violence grows daily.

Indeed, the administration seems to have no consensus even on the severity of the problem. Last month, Secretary of State Clinton said the truth: that Mexico’s drug war was beginning to resemble the violence in Colombia 20 years ago.

Days later, Obama contradicted her – saying “you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago.”

You cannot fix a problem you fail to see.

Mexico is falling to pieces and there’s a genuine danger it could turn into a failed state if nothing is done. At a bare minimum, we should be making a real effort to secure our borders, to keep the violence and the people fleeing that violence from entering the United States.

This is the real argument that Democrats are making on border security…

“So, you don’t want any more violence, crime, and welfare babies being brought over the border and we want to give 20 million illegals amnesty so they can vote for the Democratic Party. So, tell you what: Give us what we want and we’ll finally do our jobs…..Oh, you caught me! I had my fingers crossed. But, I wouldn’t lie to you again, would I? C’mon, take the deal before the next rancher gets murdered, the next American loses his job to an illegal, or the next terrorist attack happens!”